AN INTERNATIONAL ART PRIZE FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN UP TO AGE 18

My sculpture depicts a nine-year old girl, sitting questioningly yet hopelessly on her own, role-playing smoking a cigarette - only with a candy stick, stuck indecision of whether to suck or not. We see the innocent looking candy sticks' packet clenched underneath her left hand, which is in a thumb-sucking position behind her, and we see the sharp contrast between her childish innocence and the very adult act which we do not know what she has been influenced by to do, the sucking of the fake ciggarette almost sucking her future's hope away in the gasp. She is wearing school shoes, skirt and tights and an adult humoured t-shirt humouring the breasts she has not grown. This to me causes the question of: 'If she is not at school and not in full uniform, where are HER clothes? And why is she wearing a T-shirt which defies herself and which she will obviously not understand or humour?' This then causes us to relate back to the cigarette and contemplate the influence of the smoking pehaps being a member of her family, who by smoking is washing the family's money down the drain meaning that the girl cannot afford clothes of her own other than her mandatory uniform. The missing eyes, the missing identity, I have done to say that she has sort escape inside herself, and is unaware of her outside life in the world, the rare treat of the candy sticks a guilt to this lost little one.